Socialized Medicine on the Ropes – Again

In the public health system debate, I deeply believe that we don’t need a purely socialized system – nor a privatized one. Rather, I proposed a tiered, shared-responsibility model that takes into account all five spheres of government, starting with personal responsibility (self-government), and ending with civil government (the last tier that can catch those who fail to be kept healthy by self, family, church, and business tiers).

However, liberal public policy often ignores these other tiers, or turns the pyramid on its head so that civil government is the first line of help for an individual’s health. However, this upside-down (and backwards) model continues to fail, as this article at ABP discusses. The summary of the issue? Britain is now employing mandatory 10-19 week waiting periods on all non-emergency procedures in order to save money – i.e. they are pretty much rationing care.

What’s really strange is not that there aren’t enough doctors, just not enough money for the government to pay for its poor business model for health care:

Doctors are also resigning. One gynecologist said that he spent more time doing sudoku puzzles than treating patients because of the measures….

Even worse, if the hospitals don’t wait, they don’t get paid, which is a defacto method of penalizing them for providing service TOO QUICKLY.

An NHS hospital has been penalised for treating its patients too quickly – losing nearly £2.5 million, the cost of the care it provided outside an agreed contract.

Just another reason to avoid a hardcore socialistic medicine model, and err towards the personal responsibility model.